Newer Tattoo Inks may allow easier removal of permanent tattoos. What’s New in Tattoos?
Newer Tattoo Inks may allow easier removal of permanent tattoos. What’s New in Tattoos?
Can permanent tattoos be made easier to remove?
The inks may be complex compositions of dyes, metals and solvents. Some of the risks associated with tattooing include allergic reactions, scars such as keloids and infectious diseases.
The biggest infectious concerns are Hepatitis B and C, and even HIV if non-sterile needles are used.
Removal of standard tattoo dyes is difficult, expensive and often difficult to accomplish completely.
Tattoos may be removed with surgical excision, dermabrasion, carbon dioxide laser, electrocautery and other means.
Black ink tattoos are typically removed with a series of Q-switched laser treatments spaced a month apart. The laser light attempts to break up the pigment into smaller pieces that the body’s immune system can re-absorb.
Many colored pigments (yellow, white orange, purple, green) may be impossible to remove with the Q-switched laser because the wavelength is not absorbed by these pigments.
In an attempt to make permanent dyes removable, new inks are being developed, called Freedom-2.
Freedom-2 technology uses ‘biocompatible, colorless polymer microspheres’ to ‘encapsulate microscopic bioresorbable pigment particles’.
Small amounts of black iron oxide in the beads makes tham sensitive to Q-switched lasers, ‘.
so that the laser bursts the shell and releases the particles, which are then resorbed’
In animal models, Freedom-2 tattoos are more effectively removed by the Q-switched laser.
Freedom-2 dyes are not yet commercially available for human use.
The long-term safety of the Freedom-2 dyes has also not been established.
References:
Medical Letter: Vol 49 Sept 10 2007
Freedom-2 Website:
http://www.freedom2ink.com/
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